Made in America: Day 2 brings a Latinx dance party led by Bad Bunny

Latin rhythms as hot as summer itself drew about 50,000 hip-hop fans Sunday to Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Parkway for the Made in America music festival’s second and final day.

This year’s version of the Jay-Z curated fest, a highlight of Labor Day weekend for 10 years, offered the most international showing in the festival’s history.

Sunday’s Made in America staged a sold-out Latinx dance party as fans crowded the Parkway in anticipation of headline performer Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny, currently the world’s most streamed artist. The festival offered a broader, more inclusive vision of pop culture — and of “America” — as a festival that had become a one-dimensional mainstream hip-hop party in recent years broadened its scope.

Then came Bad Bunny, who strolled out on the main stage wearing red sunglasses, a vest, and beach shorts. He took a sip of a drink from a cooler and hopped up to start his set with “Moscow Mule,” his hit single from Un Verano Sin Ti, his hit fourth album.

And then the dance party the massive crowd had been waiting for was on: Latin trap grooves, a little bossa nova here, a touch of boogaloo there, on “I Like it Like That,” his 2018 hit with Cardi B and J Balvin. And plenty of numbers that started off dreamy and then accelerated into floor thumpers that had the crowd bouncing in unison over Made in America’s first ever Spanish language headliner.

“Made in America, Latinos make America,” he told the crowd, “it’s important that we remember that.”

“Otra, otra, otra!” his fans kept repeating, calling for more songs.

Puerto Rican flags were everywhere — draped on shoulders, held in hands, and emblazoned on T-shirts.

During a performance that lasted for 95 minutes, Bad Bunny addressed the crowd in Spanish, speaking English at the end only to share his name and that he comes from Puerto Rico.

Hours earlier, the multicultural day kicked off with 5′2, a nascent rapper from the U.S. Virgin Islands, followed by acts including Colombian singer and bandleader Ryan Castro, Dominican rapper Chimbala, and Mexican American urban corrido band Fuerza Regida.

The festival also showed reach with Nigerian pop star Burna Boy and Snoh Aalegra, the Persian-Swedish singer (based in Los Angeles) who delivered a sultry, seductive set of smooth R&B in the early evening hours.

“This is all about different cultures coming together and just enjoying yourself and dancing and having a good time in one place that’s the birthplace of America,” said Geoff Gordon, the Philadelphia and New York head of concert promotion company Live Nation, which produces the festival with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation.

Burna Boy, the Nigerian pop star born Damian Ogulu, preceded Bad Bunny as Sunday night’s penultimate act, putting the crowd in motion with the sound he calls “Afrofusion,” mixing hip-hop, R&B, rock, and reggae with the Afrobeat sound created by his countryman Fela Kuti.

Moving about the stage in a bucket hat, he opened his set with words that won over the crowd: “Man, I love Philly!”

» READ MORE: Bad Bunny; Tyler, the Creator; and 10 other acts to see at Made in America 2022

Earlier on Sunday afternoon, as the sun beat down in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, passing clouds and a breeze provided welcomed relief to the crowd pulsating in the fenced-off site extending from the museum’s steps.

R&B singer and songwriter Victoria Monét’s playful set was full of sexual innuendo. For instance, one song with an unprintable title expressed her wish to find a “friend u can keep.”

Before she had even finished her set, however, the cheers went up on the Liberty Stage, the event’s other marquee stage, for Fuerza Regida, the 14-piece Los Angeles-based band originally from the Sinaloa province of Mexico.

The urban corrido band included a horn section outfitted in pink-sequined jackets and took the stage to chants from Spanish-speaking fans of “Fuer-za! Fuer-za!”

Charismatic lead singer Jesus Ortiz Paz took it from there, leading the band into a high-energy set that used traditional instruments — tuba, upright bass, bajo sexto — to soundtrack a mostly Spanish language street party.

“We are so proud to be at Made in America,” Ortiz Paz said. “We are Mexican, but we are also American. We are Mexican American! And our music is like rap and reggaeton. We talk about the streets. So make some ... noise!”

The crowd hardly needed to be prompted, and seemingly every one of the thousands gathered had a phone out to capture the moment.

» READ MORE: On Day 1 of Made in America, ‘All the music is in Philadelphia this weekend’

The Latinx dance party began earlier Sunday afternoon with Chimbala, the Dominican rapper who kicked off the action at the Liberty Stage.

Wearing sunglasses and a white T-shirt with the word ‘Yes’ on the front — and ‘No’ on the back — the Santo Domingo singer born Leury Jose Tejada Brito was backed by a team of dancers dressed in pink. The act shook the crowd into action with a set full of fast-paced, rugged dembow rhythms.

Many gathered in front of the stage cooled themselves with cardboard fans handed out at the gate by Philadelphia reggaeton radio station Rumba 106.1.

The second act up on Sunday afternoon was Becca Hannah, a singer songwriter from Boston, signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation management company, who has a smoky, old-school R&B delivery that conveys an Amy Winehouse influence. Backed by a lightly funky three-piece band, the band worked an agreeable early afternoon groove that perked up when they were joined on stage by free-styling rapper Question ATL.

As in years past, the festival also offered up-and-coming acts, some with a more mellow vibe.

Among those that rewarded attention Sunday were West Philly rapper Armani White, who has gone viral of late with his new single “Billie Eilish,” and Ambre Perkins, the moody New Orleans songwriter who goes by her first name only and who navigates an alt-R&B path befitting an artist who has written for H.E.R. and collaborated with Kehlani.

West Coast hip-hop got a spotlight in the person of Kalan.FrFr, who made an entrance to the strains of Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.,” and proceeded to spit rhymes in a neck-snapping set that hearkened back to the G-funk 1990s. Accompanied by a DJ and hype man, he mixed party raps with tales from the streets that advertised his authenticity, appropriate for an artist for whom the FrFr stands for “for real, for real.”

The act that started it all Sunday was 5′2, the rapper from St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, who is named after her height and whose set ended with a “Happy Birthday” singalong for her manager.

The performance was a tie-in with the U.S. Virgin Islands tourism booth located just a block up the Parkway.

As the crowd filtered into the fest, the rapper born Kiana Harvey was supported by a crew of green-feathered Enchanted Dancers, also from St. Thomas, as well as the white-clad Eccentric Mock Jumbies dancers, who towered above the crowd on stilts.

It was the second consecutive year that the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Tourism has been at MIA, but the first year here for Enchanted Dancer Camry Febres.

“I love it,” Febres said, of her first impressions of Philadelphia and the festival. “The weather is nice. The people are nice. The people are lit!”

Many fans were psyched to see headliner Bad Bunny, including Emma Rivera, and her friend Noelia Vargas who had come from the area around Maryland and Virginia.

“It’s not just Puerto Ricans here, there’s so many different types” of Latinx people, said Rivera. “But, yes, we’re here for Bad Bunny. We drove 2½ hours.”

Francis Sajjad came from the Bronx, by herself, to see Bad Bunny. Dressed head to toe in Puerto Rican flag attire and Bad Bunny merchandise, Sajjad said she believes that Bad Bunny has done more for Puerto Rico in his musical career than Daddy Yankee, a renowned rapper, singer, and composer called by many the King of Reggaeton.

“I love everything about him,” she said.

Inquirer staff writer Michelle Myers contributed to this article.